Black Sea residents want to aid marine recovery

People living around the Black Sea seem willing to pay more to help the sea recover from near-collapse after decades of pollution and overfishing, a U.N.-sponsored survey showed on Monday.
The Black Sea Ecosystem Recovery Project said it would put the findings – based on 400 interviews with residents around the Black Sea in Russia, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Romania, Turkey and Georgia – to governments in the region to encourage action. “Almost 80 percent of respondents said they would be … prepared to pay extra money towards improving the Black Sea environment,” it said in a statement, The project was funded by the U.N.’s Global Environment Facility lending group. It also said that almost 40 percent of those questioned reckoned that lack of government action was the main barrier to cleaning up the Black Sea, where 21 of 26 major fish species have been considered commercially extinct since the 1990s. (11.08.2006 – Turkish Daily News)